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The Hungarian Central Statistical Office has published the detailed date of the census carried out in October 2011, which shows a huge drop in the number of people who associate themselves with traditional churches. The number of persons of “other” denominations increased by 70%, while the number of persons who stated that they do not belong to any denomination increased within ten years by one fifth. This latter figure includes atheists. While the 2001 census does not give separate data specifically for atheists, the 2011 census does, with the intention to put religious people/believers without affiliation in the “no affiliation” box, and counting atheists separately. However, strictly speaking “atheist” is not a proper answer to the question asked, especially considering that there is no atheist community in the country (“agnostic” was not a possible answer). The exact question was “What religious community, denomination do you feel you belong to?” (“Melyik vallási közösséghez, felekezethez érzi tartozónak magát?”), i.e. the data are about belonging to denominational communities, not about belief itself. The “linguistically natural” answer for atheists, agnostics, non-believers and non-denominational believers is the “no affiliation” box. If the statistics office really wants to have data on belief, next time it will have to ask about belief itself (or include belief in all the answers, such as “believer affiliated with denomination X”, “non-believer affiliated to denomination X”, “believer without affiliation”, and “non-believer without affiliation”) instead of introducing a single answer about belief in the “denomination” question.
So it will be interesting to see the data interpreted by religious politicians – my guess is that they are going to lump the “no affiliation” group under the “believers” header (as a polling institute did recently in Germany: http://hpd.de/node/15311).

But let’s see the table:

1930

1949

2001

2011

Roman Catholics

64,84%

67,80%

51,87%

37,15%

Greek Catholics

2,32%

2,70%

2,64%

1,80%

Catholics together

67,15%

70,49%

54,51%

38,96%

Orthodox Christians

0,46%

0,39%

0,14%

0,14%

Reformed (Calvinists)

20,88%

21,89%

15,91%

11,61%

Lutherans

6,15%

5,24%

2,99%

2,16%

Jewish

5,12%

1,45%

0,13%

0,11%

Other denomination

0,22%

0,40%

0,95%

1,68%

No religious affiliation

0,02%

0,13%

14,55%

16,69%

Atheist

1,48%

Nones and atheists together

0,02%

0,13%

14,55%

18,17%

No answer provided

10,83%

27,16%

(Between 1949 and 2001, the census did not cover religious data.)

Note that the drop in people identifying as Catholics is almost as big for the last 10 years than for the 62 years between 1949 and 2001 which included 40 years of communism when churchgoing was (to varying degrees) not encouraged.

The question itself, by the way, resulted in a somewhat strange incident about the affiliation of a handful of Roma in the village of Sajókaza who declared themselves Buddhists (while their religious tradition is Catholic), because they answered the question exactly: their school and community building is maintained by a Buddhist community (since religious schools got twice as much funds from the central state budget than NGOs, it would have been virtually impossible not to have a church run this special school).
The framing of the question itself biases data in favour of including looser affiliations, family tradition and the like (as compared to a question like “do you follow the teachings of a denomination, and if yes, which?”). One could fill in a community (the online version listed several hundred communities, and the Catholic church complained that the Catholics didn’t find their church, because they looked under “catholic”, not “Roman catholic”, where it was listed), or tick the “no religious affiliation”, the “atheist” and the “no answer provided” box,
Also, although it was possible to fill in the form online or on paper, much data was collected even in 2011 via personal interviews, however, any household member could answer on behalf of the whole household (with the result that elderly family members living with their adult children would answer the census while their children were away at work). In some places, the arrival of a “state person” is still somewhat of an event, so not only the whole family gathers around the questioner, but also the neighbours, which of course means that the answers will tend towards the expected norm.
It should also be added that the churches campaigned to persuade people to identify themselves in the census as their members, and they pushed their more active members to enlist as census interviewers and go collecting data.
Since the motivations of those refusing to answer may be complex and may vary, it is difficult to interpret the answer. The group probably includes believers (more likely of non traditional religious minorities or Jews) and non-religious people who are either afraid to answer (e.g. because the interviewer happens to be the churchgoing teacher of their nephew in the next village) or just believe that it is none of the government’s business to poke into their lives, and people who just don’t spend much thoughts on religious issues. It may even include some traditional churchgoing believers who just don’t agree with their church’s political statements (such as e.g. Catholics who don’t want to endorse the church’s and KDNP’s policies regarding family planning, abortion and homo- and heterosexual relations outside marriage, or Lutherans who are not happy with some prominent churchmen’s affiliation with the far-right Jobbik).
Still, there is one thing we can without doubt say about those who did not answer for sure: they do not want to endorse the “official” churches, who do not speak neither for them, nor for the “nones” and the “atheists”.

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The Hungarian parliament has modified law CXXIV of 1997 (in the 129th paragraph of law CCXII of 2012 which deals with various issues regarding the national health service), which now rules that 0,9% of income taxes are to be handed over to the churches. Similarly to the Italian system, Hungarian taxpayers offer 1% of their income tax to a religious community of the secular alternative(s) provided by the state (another 1% is to be offered to any civil organisation). Despite the media efforts of the bigger churches to get not only their follower’s tax but also that of the wider public, taxpayers are not very keen on dedicating their taxes. In 2011, 38% of taxpayers offered 1% of their income tax to one of the religious communities (this was before the number of possible beneficiaries was cut down to 31), 9% preferred the secular alternative, and 53% decided not to decide. Their 1% is now practically given to the religious communities enjoying church privileges according to the new church law.

UPDATE: sorry, I got the percentage wrong. Out of 3,44 million taxpayers, 1047906 dedicated 1% of their tax to a church, i.e. 30,47%.

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The weekly HVG has published an article on a research conducted among Hungarian Lutherans. The results were presented by Gergely Prőhle, who is not only a supervisor of the Lutheran church, but also the state secretary responsible for EU relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.The research has been conducted among 1500 adults randomly selected from the church’s registers containing a total of around 300 thousand persons (ca. 3% of the total population). According to the findings, 90% of these persons consider their religious affiliation important, and most of them do pay the “church tax”, which is collected by the church itself, so it is reasonable to assume that the 300 thousand persons not just happen to be in some register because they were baptised, but who are there due to some affiliation.Still, Mr Prőhle deplores the secularisation of church members, which continues in spite of the church’s efforts to rebuild its institutions–and the aim of the research is to develop a strategy to stop this trend. Most church members are satisfied with their pastor’s work, and three quarters of them pray at least once a week, 44% of them said that they were “faithful in their own ways”, and 7% turn to their pastor with their problems – including questions of theological nature. (The secretary of state considers this to be a consequence of the general bad condition of society, which effects also church members.)Regarding politics, the faithful are divided: while 44% of them believe the church should cooperate with parties that share their values, 41% think that the church should completely stay out of politics.While most church members pay their dues, less than half donate at worship collections, and even less offer 1% of their personal income tax. — According to tax office data, 49 thousand persons have donated their taxes to the Lutheran church, i.e. 16% of its registered members (the rest do not care or have no taxable income, such as retired persons). Most persons said that they have no income, and the findings suggest that the followers are rather poor, though looking at the tax office’s stats, the average per capita tax of Lutherans (6404 HUF) is a little bit more than the one of Catholics (5627) and Calvinists (5847).Translated into absolute figures: there are ca. 270 thousand persons for whom the Lutheran church is important (2.7% of the total population), ca. 49 thousand of them are tax paying members of society who care enough to fill out a small sheet, and 156 thousand (1.56% of the total population) are the faithful who follow their church’s teachings.hvg.hu/hvgfriss/2010.46/201046_felmeres_az_evangelikusokrol_a_maguk_modjan